'We did not sign up to work at a strip club': Former servers allege sexual harassment at Twin Peaks 'breastaurant' in Orland Park

Ex-servers at Twin Peaks in Orland Park, a "breastaurant" in the style of Hooters that requires its all-female waitstaff to wear revealing clothes, allege sexual harassment, citing a looks-based grading system.

Ex-servers at Twin Peaks in Orland Park, a "breastaurant" in the style of Hooters that requires its all-female waitstaff to wear revealing clothes, allege sexual harassment, citing a looks-based grading system.

When Sarah Blaylock joined the staff of Twin Peaks in Orland Park, she signed an agreement that laid out the expectations for a “Twin Peaks Girl.”

She said she understood that the lodge-themed restaurant chain wanted its all-female waitstaff to be physically fit and well-groomed. She said she felt comfortable wearing the uniform provided: a tight T-shirt that showed some cleavage and a narrow strip of midriff below her belly button, plus a pair of short khaki shorts and knee-high mountain boots.

But about six months after the restaurant’s April 2016 grand opening, the environment changed, Blaylock and other former workers allege in charges filed against Twin Peaks with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In a new pre-shift regimen, the women were lined up, graded on the tautness of their bodies and those with higher scores got to serve the best sections of the restaurant, the charges assert. On certain occasions, the workers allege, they were required to wear lingerie and bikinis, which one Valentine’s Day weekend resulted in police issuing Blaylock and other servers citations for indecent exposure.

"It was very degrading, and very sad," Blaylock, 28, said during an interview alongside her attorney and three other former Orland Park colleagues. "And it took a lot out of each and every one of us."

The charges filed with the EEOC in February, and later amended, allege violations of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which protects against sex discrimination, including harassment. The charges include a copy of the “Twin Peaks Girl” job description that employees must sign, a document that states, “the essence of the role is based on female sex appeal.”

Two of the charges were filed on behalf of Blaylock and Daryll Rodriguez, 24, both female bartenders who worked at the restaurant for a year before leaving last spring. A third is by a former busboy, Kenneth Biggers, 31, who alleges he was harassed and discriminated against by co-workers and managers for being gay.

A fourth former Twin Peaks employee alleging mistreatment at the restaurant, 19-year-old Jessica Mercer, who worked as a server, says she couldn’t file an EEOC charge because she exceeded the 300-day statute of limitations but is speaking out alongside her former co-workers.

Twin Peaks CEO Joe Hummel called the allegations “baseless” in an email to the Tribune. The EEOC does not comment on the status of investigations or whether it plans to take any action.

Images filed in a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Twin Peaks show uniforms that servers say they were given to wear on a daily basis and lingerie they say they were required to wear on certain theme weeks at the restaurant.

The allegations against Twin Peaks come during an era of heightened sensitivity to mistreatment of women in the workplace, fueled by the Me Too and Time’s Up movements, which legal experts say could help the women’s claims.

“Movements such as this influence public opinion greatly,” said Norma Zeitler, an employment law partner in the Chicago office of Barnes and Thornburg, who is not involved in the case. “I can see the EEOC finding this type of thought pattern interesting and something they would like to pursue.”

Twin Peaks, a fast-growing Dallas-based chain of sports bar-and-grills, on its website promotes a lumberjack “mantality” centered on cold beers, wall-to-wall TVs and attractive women servers. Often referred to in the media as a “breastaurant,” along the lines of Hooters and Tilted Kilt, its slogan promises “Scenic Views.”

“The Twin Peaks Girl Image is based on the wholesome, yet sexy, Girl Next Door Image,” said the job description attached to the charges filed with the EEOC. “The Twin Peaks Girl character is what makes the Twin Peaks concept unique.” The document does not mention the lingerie days nor the looks-based ranking system.

Twin Peaks had more than 5,000 employees and 81 locations across the country last year, including four in Chicago’s suburbs, according to the company. The company, which had just 28 restaurants in 2012, saw annual sales jump 14 percent last year as it opened new restaurants, compared with just a 2.5 percent rise for the overall casual dining segment, according to market research firm Technomic. The Orland Park location is a company-owned restaurant.

“Twin Peaks does not tolerate any type of harassment or discrimination and has strict policies and training practices in place to make sure every guest and employee is treated equally and with great respect,” Hummel said in a statement. “We look forward to vigorously defending ourselves against these outrageous and baseless allegations. Since this is an ongoing legal matter, it would be inappropriate to discuss further specifics.”

For Chicago attorney Tamara Holder, who is representing the former employees, the case is personal. A former Fox News contributor, she received a multimillion-dollar settlement from the media company in February 2017 after she accused an executive of sexually assaulting her in his office.

“Times are changing, and women aren’t putting up with this,” she said.

Times are changing, and women aren’t putting up with this.— Tamara Holder, attorney

But change has a long way to go in the restaurant industry, where low wages, high turnover and a reliance on tips make workers vulnerable to bad behavior that becomes normalized and often goes unchallenged.

Prior lawsuits against businesses that promote the physical attributes of their servers have been settled, allowing them to avoid definitive court rulings that could force them to change the way they operate, said Anthony Michael Kreis, visiting assistant professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

But legal defenses that similar restaurants have used to justify their uniforms, grooming standards and all-female staffs — such as the argument that they are essential to the job — could meet more resistance amid the current social intolerance for sexism, he said.

“In the environment we’re operating in, where there is heightened sensitivity, I would be very hard-pressed to see courts accepting restaurants’ justification for these standards,” Kreis said.

The women making claims against Twin Peaks hope to embolden others to follow their lead.

Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune

Former Twin Peaks restaurant employees, from left to right, Daryll Rodriguez, Jessica Mercer, and Sarah Blaylock. The women who previously worked at the restaurant chain Twin Peaks in Orland Park, filed EEOC complaints alleging sexual harassment and discrimination.

“We want other women to know that they’re not alone and if they are going through that abuse, that they don’t have to be,” said Mercer, who left her serving job at Twin Peaks in February 2017. “Because it is abuse. At first we wrote off that it wasn’t.”

Blaylock, Rodriguez and Mercer said they were drawn to the job of Twin Peaks Girl in 2016 by the promise of good money and a fun atmosphere. They said they enjoyed it at first, but several months after the Orland Park restaurant’s grand opening, new management installed several changes detailed in the charges filed with the EEOC.

Before beginning each shift, the women had to line up against the kitchen wall and managers would give them points for hair, makeup, costume and body tone, pinching their bellies and telling them their backs were too fleshy or their legs too stout, the women allege. A ranking was posted, and those lower on the list would get worse sections, according to the charges they filed.

“As much as we would all work out, we were all athletic, it was never good enough,” said Rodriguez, who said she was on her college track team while she worked at the restaurant.

The charges also say that the women were rarely given meal breaks — a potential violation of state labor law — and if they were, they had to order off a separate “spa menu” available only to employees, which consisted of very small portions. The charges allege the women were shamed and called fat if they tried to eat during their shift, and were told it could hurt their tone grade.

Meanwhile, their uniforms changed, the shirts shrinking so that they stopped just below the bra line, according to the charges. The restaurant also started hosting dress-up days, which the women allege required them to buy and wear racy costumes that had to be approved by management.

“Picture bras, panties, garter belts,” said Blaylock, who alleges in her EEOC charge that she spent hundreds of dollars on costumes.

During Snow Bunny week, the women allege that they worked their shifts in bikinis in the middle of winter. Rodriguez remembers seeing heads swivel the first time the women walked onto the restaurant floor in black lingerie, for Black Friday. “I felt like I was in a zoo,” she said. “I have never felt like that before.”

“It wasn’t just male customers, it was families coming in,” Blaylock added. “It was children watching us in lingerie and bikinis.”

Orland Park police didn’t like it either. During “Sweetheart Lingerie Week” last year, pegged to Valentine’s Day, police Chief Tim McCarthy sent officers into the restaurant, where they “observed almost every employee dressed in lingerie that exposed their buttocks,” according to the Feb. 10, 2017, police report. They gave managers a warning and returned later that day to find the women had put on appropriate shorts, the report said.

I felt like I was in a zoo. I have never felt like that before.— Daryll Rodriguez, former Twin Peaks server

But when plainclothes officers went to the restaurant the following day, after receiving an anonymous citizen complaint, they found four servers wearing “underwear which only covered a portion of the top of their buttocks,” the police report said. Police issued citations to the restaurant as well as the four servers, including Blaylock, for violations of the city’s conduct of a licensee ordinance, which prohibits indecent exposure.

Blaylock, who said her outfit was approved by management that morning, alleges in her EEOC filing that she was told the restaurant would take care of the ticket and she did not have to go to court. She didn’t find out until a year later, after Holder, her lawyer, requested the court records, that her $100 fine had been paid and she had been found liable. An attorney had pleaded her liable without her permission and failed to notify her of her right to appeal, she alleges in her EEOC charge.

Blaylock, who worked as a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home before she took the Twin Peaks job, now attends nursing school while working part-time at a steakhouse downtown. She worries about background checks turning up an indecent exposure citation when she applies for jobs in the future.

The introduction of the more revealing outfits was meant to boost sales, the women said in interviews, but while the restaurant got busier, they said their tips declined as the clientele changed.

Reviews of Twin Peaks on the job review site Glassdoor indicate that the grading system based on physical appearance has taken place at restaurants other than Orland Park, and photos on the company’s Facebook and Instagram pages show servers wearing lingerie at restaurants other than Orland Park.

Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune

Former employees of the Orland Park Twin Peaks say the moderately sexy uniforms they were given when they started later turned into racy lingerie that left them so unclothed that police ticketed them for indecent exposure. Attorney Tamara Holder displays some of the lingerie.

Former employees of the Orland Park Twin Peaks say the moderately sexy uniforms they were given when they started later turned into racy lingerie that left them so unclothed that police ticketed them for indecent exposure. Attorney Tamara Holder displays some of the lingerie. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

The charges filed with the EEOC also allege that the dressing room where the women were expected to change was doorless, drawing catcalls from male colleagues, and that a security camera was angled inside.

When they complained to management about various issues, the women allege they were told: If you don’t like it, you can quit.

But they say they had bills to pay, and though the money wasn’t always good — $30 to $120 per shift, depending on the day — they didn’t want to leave without another job lined up. The women also say the experience dealt a blow to their self-esteem that left them feeling trapped.

“Working in an environment like that, it made you feel like you were nothing,” Blaylock said. “My confidence was so low, it’s like this is what I deserve as a woman. I didn’t think I was good enough for anything else.”

Mercer and Rodriguez say they eventually did quit. Blaylock said she was removed from the schedule after a disagreement with management.

Meanwhile, Biggers, the former busboy, alleges he was subject to repeated vulgar taunts after co-workers learned he was gay, with managers calling him “Princess” and “Bitchy Kenny” when he complained. His charges also allege wage and meal break violations, and retaliation.

One challenge for proving sex discrimination is showing that women were treated differently than men, which can be difficult when all the servers are women, Chicago-Kent’s Kreis said. The argument that sex stereotypes drove discriminatory treatment — that is, that women are expected to look a certain way — has not often been a successful interpretation of Title VII, he said.

But that could change as legal theory evolves, Kries said. For example, the EEOC now considers discrimination based on sexual orientation to be a form of sex discrimination, he said.

Claims of harassment — which is illegal when it is deemed so frequent and severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment, or results in an adverse employment decision, according to the EEOC — also can be difficult to win if the employer argues that the servers should have been aware of the type of environment before they were hired, and that it was therefore not unwelcome, said Zeitler, of Barnes and Thornburg.

There is an exemption from sex discrimination law for businesses whose gender-specific standards are “bona fide occupational qualifications” — that is, essential to the job. Hooters and other businesses that promote sexy women servers, like casinos, have used that argument in the past to justify all-female serving staffs. But it may not fly in the current social climate, Kreis said.

“Is the main purpose of these restaurants to serve sexually appealing servers?” Kreis said. “Or is it to serve food?”

The former Twin Peaks workers have no doubt.

“We did not sign up to work at a strip club,” Blaylock said. “I’m not downing women who work at strip clubs, but we signed up to be servers and bartenders.”